Comfortable Old Boots
by moonship
Summary: Prompt fic. Garrus Victus was never more surprised than he was the day his cousin ran away with a hanar, until he finds himself dealing with the cannabis-farming humans of Shepard's Stand. Living legends aren't always legendary the second time around...
1. Vandalism

**Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.**

**Obligatory Note: This is a half-assed story with potentially inconsistent characterization and writing. There may be faulty logic and canon characters who seem rampagingly OOC due to reincarnations and headcanon. There may be unintentional Mary Sue activity, 'cause that shit's sneaky. This story will contain poorly executed adult content. There will also be times this story seems to take itself too seriously only to follow up with people shooting rampaging dinosaurs. As I have the attention span of a squirrel on speed, chapters are likely to be under ten pages. If you're down with this, party on.**

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><p><strong>Comfortable Old Boots<br>Chapter One: Vandalism**

Anderson David's dog had been on its last legs for years. Thane was a mottled, gray old thing, descended from the rangy, spindly limbed beasts that roamed over the lush hills outside of Shepard's Stand. He'd been entirely too solemn for a dog, right down to the way he'd sit on his ass and stare with his black, soulful eyes at anyone he deemed worthy of his attention. He'd been creaky as the nuts and bolts of the land cruisers parked outside the rickety houses. Lately, he wheezed and spent most of his time in a restless sleep outside the front stoop of Anderson's house, as if patiently waiting for death. Kai Lin Xiu had backed his own cruiser over him that morning.

_She _had retaliated by setting the vehicle on fire.

Quicker than one could say 'That was for Thane, you _son_ of a _bitch,'_the colonist had been read her rights and hauled off to lockup by one of the Moreau boys. She'd gone quite willingly, all full of piss and vinegar as Kai Lin had snarled and pointed and threatened and swore and-

Strangely, she hated her off-world ex enough in that moment she would have put a bullet in his head if her weapon hadn't already been confiscated. Relationships rarely ended smoothly in Shepard's Stand when one party was an _outsider, _but murder was _not_ the outcome any sane person considered. Arguably, neither were acts of arson. She knew damned well and good that was the only reason she was sitting here, locked away nice and neat behind one of the glowing blue cell doors instead of being shipped off to Omega and faced with some real jail time. The folk here took care of their own, even when Their Own decided to do something hard-headed and crazy as reducing a Mako Firebird XG-K to little more than a fireball and various metal parts.

All in all, it had probably been far easier to do what she had than it should have been. It helped that Kai was disliked because he was a douche who wore expensive computer equipment on his face during the daytime.

One way or another, she'd be getting her comeuppance for the stunt she'd pulled earlier in the day. Dad would rant and rage over the video feed, Omega in the background giving his prosthetic eye an odd blue tint when the flashing lights hit it just the right way. He'd ask her why Anderson and Jimmy were doing a 'shit job' in keeping an eye out for her- or better yet, why she didn't decide to make a living blowing things up for Various Interested Parties. He'd demand to know why he shouldn't call in a few favors and see if some real, hard time might make a soldier out of her. Anderson's disappointment would be far worse. She'd caught a glance of him as Geoffrey Moreau had cuffed her, dirt on his hands from digging Thane's grave and stern disapproval etched on his dark face.

Somehow, letting Anderson David down was worse than letting down anyone else on the planet Normandy. It was something she did more often than she'd like. Arms folded over her chest,she tipped her head back and blew out a noisy breath. The air behind the cell 'door' was slightly stale due to the crappy ventilation systems, while the blue energy keeping her locked away flickered dangerously now and again. "Well," she said aloud, voice all ragged and raspy from black, oily smoke. "Hell. Still worth it."

After a while, she slept. It was boredom and stuffy, sticky heat that put her under more than any real exhaustion. Really, it was more dozing than anything that would carry her through the next day. She roused at one point, pulled from her nap by a distant rumble and shaking of the ground that reminded her of the earthquake she'd experienced the one time she went to Earth with her mother.

Five minutes later, Geoff Moreau wandered back there to tell her they'd watched one of the military supply ships go down. The site was probably too far from the Urdnot outpost for the base to realize what had happened, leaving any potential survivors well and truly fucked if their comm equipment had been shot by a power surge in the landing. While the colonists hated those ships and weren't particularly fond of the aliens for whom they provided, leaving the crash site alone was out of the question. There were survivors to check for- if not, salvage they might sneak away before Urdnot was any wiser.

_"Poor bastards,"_ she muttered blearily, then wished him, _"Luck."_

The next time she saw Geoff, several hours had passed and her main source of entertainment was still extended napping. Damned if she wasn't glad to see him at that point. "_Turian ship,"_ Geoff stressed, as if the word were particularly dirty. _'Krogan'_ dirty. There had been a scuffle in the chaos, guns fired. One of the survivors had taken a shot and the captain had come back with him to smooth things over and use their vidcomm. Likely, there was more to it than a case of friendly fire.

It occurred to her that pissing off a military base by waving firearms at their soldiers was roughly as stupid as taking a plasma light to someone's terra cruiser. She was in good company. Head heavy from sleep, she'd grunted, muttered that it was lucky there were survivors and rolled _right_ back over. Maybe she'd get out in time to get some firsthand news about what was happening out there in the wide world of space.

When she drifted off for the second time, she dreamed of the most beautiful glass floors she'd ever seen, reflecting stars and nebulae to the point it seemed impossible to know where space stopped and solid ground began. The panels shattered, bright shards of ice scattered over with rainbows. Outside, ships soared and men died in little bursts of fire.

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><p><em>That was for Thane, you son of a bitch<em>

_A large, turian foot stepped carefully about the pile of glass, but didn't bother to avoid crushing the hand of the man bleeding out over the cracking ruins of that same floor_

_Let's go, Sh-_

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><p>This time, she snapped awake with her heart hammering in her chest and the sour stink of her own sweat in her nostrils. Scrubbing a palm down her face, she blinked hard, squeezing her eyes shut tightly enough that she saw spots of color flash behind her closed lids. <em>Space dots,<em> she thought inexplicably, shifting on the uncomfortable raised cot anchored to the wall. _Christ. I have to lay off the fuel inhalation before bed._ Her knees were shaking once she was on her feet, legs numb from being folded up underneath her for most of the afternoon. The pins and needles sensation combined with the godawful chill that shouldn't be working its way down her body in this heat made her all too aware of the need to _move._

_ My God, a floor like that..._ The jail floors were steel, dingy and somewhat dented from a couple hundred years of heavy use hauling heavy security equipment across its surface. She stared at those floors a moment, then looked around the cramped interior of the cell as she carefully shook one leg to restore feeling. There was nowhere to go but toward the cell door, where a woman could _just_ barely see into the open doorway of Armando Donnelly's office if she squinted the right way.

What she squinted at was a turian in _front _of the doorway, his bulk blotting out Miranda Donnelly's smaller outline. All she could see of her was a flash of white cloth and smooth brown hair. _Oh,_ she thought to herself, locking her knees to keep them from buckling beneath her. _Oh, shit. _"Huh," she said aloud, in a strange, stunned way that sounded as if she'd been punched in the stomach and given a birthday present all at the same time. He turned his head toward her. _"Hey,"_ was the next thing out of her mouth, that single word muffled by the dull buzz of the energy locks. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard the sharp sound of glass breaking.

Vivid blue paint was messily smeared over a face that looked hard as leather and rough as tree bark. He was young- probably, some turian officer that had no doubt been in the military from the time he hit puberty. He had the thousand yard stare of a man who'd hauled himself from the wreckage of a ship and who'd probably earned himself a few scars in the process. She stared at him, a turian no different from any of the others she'd seen and inexplicably thought: _Click. Don't flinch._

"Ah," is what _he_ said, following up with an echo of her own dazed "_hey."_

That was how Tess Shepard Jane Helen McKay met Captain Garrus Victus for the first time.


	2. Garrus Victus

**Comfortable Old Boots  
>Chapter Two: Garrus Victus<strong>

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><p>Garrus Victus had been young for any sort of captaincy whatsoever- barely seven years out of military training. For all intents and purposes and in spite of his age, his political rank in the Hierarchy ought to have been higher. He was the son of a powerful family, some mishmash intermarriage of the best the turians had to offer when the rebuilding of Palaven had started three hundred years ago. Politicians advancing their own children was frowned upon in practice, but more common than the government liked to claim in any case. His mother's grandmother had been an offshoot of the Orakas, his father's mother descended from <em>the<em> Councilor Sparatus of the Eden Prime War.

An obedient son for all intents and purposes, he'd tossed aside the first Intendant nomination nudged his way when he'd turned twenty-one. He'd strode right into the family home and announced to his vaguely stunned parents he intended to remain a career spacer if he didn't decide to sign up with O-Sec or Citadel-II security. They'd likely remained so calm about it because they'd written it off as a phase.

His siblings had raised their long, sharp fingers at him as they'd commented on his military "career." They had been very well meaning, as every good turian politician had their years of experience in the art of soldiering. Time in the regiment was a way of life. What baffled them all was his insistence on starting from the bottom and working his way up- not to the position of council member or the coveted position of general over still recovering turian troops.

He could argue that he felt he had a higher purpose in life. There was plenty he could say about wanting to help people, or to help strengthen the turian-krogan alliance by providing a fine example of how the two races could work together after Mordin Solus' genophage cure. The truth was, he was chafing at the idea of political restrictions by the end of his first year in the fleet and far more years of social get-togethers where his elders waxed about 'the old days' that had ended before they had even been born. Most of them set foot on a spacecraft no more than a dozen times in spite of rigorous military training. So, he decided not to sit and watch the world pass him by while he decided the best way to make a contribution to the world- he would become one of the spacers- and he would be a good one, finger quotes and parental nudging toward important missions be damned.

Garrus had a faint strain of Vakarian blood in his veins, which his mother blamed for his tendency to go his own way when he decided to be stubborn bout something. All in all, something as flimsy as genetics were a convenient excuse.

It would be a mistake for one to assume he had no desire to prove himself. He'd been irritated when all his parents had done was click their mandibles, wished him luck and had patted him on the back when he'd become the youngest soldier of the decade to be given command of their own ship. After all, he'd worked hard to achieve that rank on his own, even if the _Kara II _was a small freighter with an old power core and an elevator that refused to work half the time. Running a supply ship back and forth to the military bases dotting recovering planets gave him a chance to see the galaxy. No small feat and no small expense since the first relays had shut down.

He was proud of that ship and proud of the crew, full of grizzled old veterans with a fondness for the _Kara II_ only years of service could nurture. When she'd gone down, it had been with no warning, no blare of systems or urgent warnings from one of the women down in engineering. They'd had little time to strap themselves in as the pilot made that emergency landing, Garrus shouting orders and snarling out a 'brace yourselves, men, we're going down!' when the engines had sputtered last minute during the landing. His body had whipped forward against the restraints, head snapping back and then into the panel behind him. Stars flashed before his eyes; not figurative stars, but_ literal_ ones.

As the _Kara II_ scraped and screamed her way along the lush landscape outside Shepard's Stand and Urdnot Outpost, she had ripped up trees and great hunks of earth in the process. Bodies jerked and in some cases flew straight into the wall. Freighters were heavy and bulky, and even a minor emergency landing could be fatal to all inside a ship. The sound of those alarms would send most trainees straight to their prayers to the spirits. Garrus was unable to make out the chaos before him, unable to hear the curses. He saw fire, along with bits and pieces of the galaxy that had fascinated him since childhood. He saw-

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><p><em>"Hell, Garrus, you were always ugly. Slap some face paint on there, and no one will even notice." Her smile was unrepentant and welcoming all at the same time. She ran her tongue over her teeth, a lazy gesture even as she stood tall and upright. He could make out a slightly odd-colored flash where he thought some of her teeth must have been replaced.<em>

_Garrus laughed hard enough it hurt, then grunted from the pain."Don't make me laugh, damn it. My face is barely holding together as it is."_

_She was sprawled out in her underwear in bed, then, badly chewed fingernails poking at the mole on her shoulder and a gun on the bedside table. There was blood on his own face, along with a nasal voice in the air that warned them to 'not ingest.' He could smell a heavy odor of ozone in the air, and something a little like burnt flesh. He stared blankly at the head of a floating salarian before it vanished. There was a bottle of wine in his hand, something cheap and paid for on a vigilante's salary._

_"Don't ingest," the salarian's voice warned for the second time. He found himself wishing the bobbing apparition would get the hell out of there. After all, Mordin was dead and time was short. Garrus turned back toward the now armored woman, scratching at a bit of his fringe._

_"What're you thinking about, soldier?" she asked him, pulling the last word out so that it was more a drawl than anything else. All at once, the fake skin patching the cybernetics on her face began to split and crack like hot mud baking in the sun._

_A mandible twitched upward. He could feel the flick of it even if he had no idea why he ought to be smiling at what he said next. There was a bright, brilliant flash of red light. Her gun was suddenly in his hand, primed to fire at the screeching hulk of machinery suddenly looming from above. "Mostly, I was thinking about London and lucky bullets," he shouted above the din._

_"Go big or go home, Vakarian-"_

_She laughed._

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><p>The first thought that entered his mind as he came back to reality and the crew began the painful process of counting out the casualties and seeing to their wounded was a strange one. 'I wonder where this tendency to expect the worst came from?' There was no time to puzzle over such a thing, or to be grateful for the fact he didn't think he had a concussion. 'Captain Victus' had his priorities, after all, and those priorities had involved the realities of gunfire from human colonists with too much pride in themselves and not enough sense.<p>

Garrus had never been to the colony- after all, it was his first flight to planet Normandy- but he'd heard of the people there. Every one of the human settlers claimed to have been descended from _that_ crew, though most of the colonies had sprung up within the past fifty years when the quarians and salarians had somehow managed to recover bits of the old jump stations to cobble together a rather limited leaping system. The people of "the Stand" were the worst of them all the humans on Normandy, rumor had it. Their mayor was called 'Shepard.' They had built a memorial out of pieces of the old ship and historical value to the rest of the galaxy be _damned._ They celebrated 'Normandy Day' and left flowers and such out by one of the old wings four times a year. Colonists there would rename the sky _Shepard's Blanket_if they thought they could get away with doing so.

It was a miracle none of the humans who had come to scout out the accident had been killed. Navigator Antius had taken a shot to the arm by the time a man with a weathered face and palms so dirty Garrus could see the grime even against the dark skin had stepped in to play peacemaker. He went by David- "Captain David when I was with the Alliance," he'd said, as if that would be enough to defuse tensions between xenophobic humans and angry turian soldiers after little more than a comm line and a place to recover away from burning rubble.

Humans snarled, pointed and generally glared as four turians sat rigidly in the backs of terra cruisers, Garrus privately surprised at how easy it seemed to keep it together under the circumstances. He hadn't been pleased to go with the colonists and a few of his more able-bodied crew members back to the Stand, particularly since some of them had wanted to see human blood on the ground. _Nobody said the business of being captain was pleasant,_ he noted. After all, he was alive and most of the _Kara II'_s crew were unhurt. Let it not be said a Victus was unwilling to slog through shit so others could get some fresh air on the other side.

"Always was a bad name for a ship," one cool-headed private muttered alongside him, drawing her knee toward her chest. He'd brought her because she'd proven herself to be particularly steady through this entire ordeal, far more of an asset than a liability. He couldn't remember her name. At this point, he didn't even try.

"Quiet, soldier," Garrus ordered automatically, more concerned with his surroundings than common ship superstition. There was little tactical advantage offered by the trees, far away as they were. Any of them would be shot down by the time they made it to higher ground. _There's no reason it should come to that. The worst is over._ He rubbed at his throbbing head, blinking hard once or twice.

When Anderson David led him to what he knew had to be the local jail, he went straight-backed and without any sign of resistance, pointedly ignoring a less than quiet whisper from behind them that it was a 'damned stupid choice.' Luckily for his crew, his gamble paid off and logic won the day, as the head of the colony was waiting for him in a large, leather chair that seemed too luxurious for such a battered old building.

"You have to understand these are good people, Captain Victus," 'Shepard' Miranda Donnelly told him in that vaguely smug, pleasantly modulated voice of hers. She was married to the head security officer- something Bailey. "- but we're isolated here and as you've no doubt realized, we like it that way." He found it telling that she was meeting with him in the local jail while the rest of them- humans and turians- waited just outside. Garrus didn't respond at first, thoughts back with the wreckage of the _Kara II_ and the small pile of bodies being draped over with tarps by surviving turian soldiers.

"Ah- yes, Shepard," he managed, jerking himself back to attention. The word felt odd and heavy on his tongue. He disliked it, and the dark-haired woman who claimed to be 'one of them' even if she spoke with an accent he recognized as different from the humans she led. She twitched one dark brow upward and smiled faintly.

He smiled back, tight and controlled. "The Hierarchy appreciates your cooperation during this difficult time. My concern is contacting Urdnot as soon as possible-" He had the distinct impression neither of them wanted to walk out to find _more _wounded because someone or other wanted to have a pissing contest over who had rights to which area on which planet. With luck, David was as competent a peacemaker he had appeared the first time he'd opened his mouth. Old soldiers tended toward one or the other- peace or violence.

The burning eezo fumes seemed entirely too close when the wind blew through the open window. _Damned crashes carry further than you'd think- _At the time, he didn't know that there had been a smaller explosion further out, that a terra cruiser had caught fire not far outside Shepard's Stand. The smell was sharp and pungent enough that he actually had to breathe through his mouth, turning his head for all of a second in the direction of: "Huh. _Hey."_

He'd met enough human women to know which ones were beautiful and which ones fell short of the standard. The one he could barely see in her cell was not at all like Miranda Donnelly, who was one of the prettiest he'd ever set eyes upon. She loomed over the Shepard, all corded muscle, fuzzy hair and aquiline features. For a split second, he saw only red light where she ought to have been standing. His mouth went dry.

"Ah. _Hey."_

Garrus dropped his datapad on Shepard Donnelly's foot.


	3. Smooth Talker

**Comfortable Old Boots  
>Chapter Three: Smooth Talker<strong>

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><p>Tess- 'Shepard' to her father, much to the horror of everyone, including Tess herself- had heard about turians. Hell, she <em>knew <em>turians, and very nearly in the Biblical sense. She'd talked to a couple the one time she'd gone to Omega as a teen. She'd been fifteen, had a bit too much to drink and wound up in the back of a krogan's car, studiously trying to engineer the world's first Turian Neck Hickey. When Zaaed had caught the lot of them, he'd shot out all the windows and dragged her off by her arm. 'You can come back when you're thirty,' he'd said.

Jackass.

The only turians she'd seen since then were the ones who came down from the Urdnot base. They didn't visit, as everyone _knew_ turians were in bed with the krogan since the Reaper War. _Krogan_ were all over the damned place. Krogan did _everything. __Krogan_ wanted to build a vacation spot for people with the money to pay for space travel- which was fairly strange and didn't make much sense to her since most of the krogan around here could care less about economics. The aforementioned site was right off in the distance over there, past the turian's shoulder and probably not too far from where that supply ship had gone down. _Can't see the window, anyway,_she noted stupidly, as it seemed all she could think about was real estate, outdated forms of male dominance in society, and clever greetings to visiting aliens.

Shepard Donnelly was grimacing in pain and recovering her dignity in that flawless way only _Miranda Donnelly_ could manage, pointedly smacking the door lock and blocking the only view Tess had of the newcomer. Regarding the dully gleaming metal door with heavy-lidded eyes, she sat back heavily on the cot, lacing her fingers together. Geoff Moreau was tromping his way inside even as she did so, muttering something under his breath about 'size not mattering' and 'someone needs to teach these people how to pilot a ship right.'

"Geoff," she said aloud, puffing out a breath loud enough it caused her cheeks to balloon out. _I'm dizzy. Funny, that. _

Geoff was the youngest Moreau brother, all gangling limbs and smart-ass remarks. He always seemed to be moving, as if being able to get from Point A to Point B was the most wonderful thing on Normandy itself. They'd been on the same soccer team as kids. Even then, he thought he was hot shit. Truth be told, he had enough skills under his belt that 'I'm Hot Shit, Look at Me' was justified. The worst part about dealing with him was that he was actually as funny as he believed. Bastard. _He_ squinted at her. _She_ squinted at him.

_Geoffrey Moreau, you charming son of a bitch._

"Look, I called him a _dick,_I didn't say you should blow up his cruiser when he decided to back over Thane. That's all on you-" the lawman insisted, but damned if he didn't look a little amused when he denied any part he might have played in the whole affair. For a moment, she had to wonder why someone like him had gone in to law enforcement. Probably because there wasn't much else to do on the colony other than farming and general upkeep.

"It's not about Thane. All you told me is that a ship went down and fire wasn't so friendly."

She poked, prodded, and generally bribed what information she could get from him. After all, it wasn't every day that turian forces decided to skip on in to hijack some of their resources. She was more interested than she'd like to admit, growing jittery the longer the Shepard and the captain stayed behind closed doors. It was more practical to focus on the aftermath of something like a ship crash over a dead dog. She wasn't wanting to think more about Thane than she already had in the past several hours. Anderson loved Thane. _Everyone_ loved that dog- except Miranda. Miranda was a cat person. _Dammit, Kai Lin- _

What she found out was a little bit of 'Miranda's ready to kick them out right now,' a hint of 'you know what the terrain between here and Urdnot's like' and 'I wonder if it's true about turian drivers on terra cruisers. Kai Lin says they cause car accidents. Then again, Kai Lin's the devil.'

Kai Lin was the devil, she agreed, although Satan probably hadn't minored in the study of the Kama Sutra at a Citadel-II university. Her reasoning behind the giant mess that had led to dead dogs and arson was selfish and fairly transparent.

Once Tess was free and clear of the whole 'prison mess' and vowing to avoid Anderson until she could muster enough sincere regret to apologize to him, she settled down outside the jail to wait. No one wanted to deal with bullshit when their dog had been backed over by someone wanting to prove a point to their ex-girlfriend- and she wouldn't deny that she'd dealt Anderson a fair amount of bullshit to shovel in twenty-three years. _Aren't I something? _She wondered silently, letting out a self-deprecating snort as she cast a look over her shoulder at the distant hunk of scrap that currently marked Thane's grave. _Yeah. I'm something, all right._

She exchanged words with townsfolk as they came and went- awkward snippets of conversation that often followed people trying to be polite to someone who had royally fucked up. Using a stick, she drew pictures in the damp soil and tried not to think too hard about _why_ it was a bad idea to go bother a military officer caught in the aftermath of a crisis. _On the other hand, one more bad call will put you at two-of-three for the week. _

Waiting until Anderson had left the turians _alone_ in the temporary white housing, she climbed to her feet. Bobbing and weaving her way around noisy and irritable locals who were heading home and away from this mess of a day proved to be harder than she expected. Getting to the temporary without drawing _too_ much attention to herself was trickier still, even though it was nearly dark now. Making it around the back of the building without anyone realizing what she was doing was easier. There was nothing quite like several high walls to make _stealth_ nice and uncomplicated.

The turian captain was leaning against the back of the place, gray armor a little stark against eggshell white walls. Her father had been military for a time, and somehow, she suspected this soldier had already talked to five different people on five different planets during the few hours she'd been badgering Geoff for conversation. _Conversation and unimportant details,_ she told herself, scrubbing a hand through messy hair. _Go home, Tess. No one likes a xenophile. Or an arsonist, but too late for that one. _

He wasn't looking in her direction, but all at once, she knew _he_ knew she was watching. The realization was there in the way he tensed _just_slightly, canting his head to one side. An observation like that was a pornographic novel cliché, but there it was, all overblown and ridiculous. Being found out right away was for the best, since she didn't plan to lurk in a dark corner staring at strange men as they stood around by their lonesome. That was Friday's method of entertainment.

"Need something?" he eventually asked, and somehow, she got the impression that he'd been expecting her _here_, even if he hadn't understood where 'here' would be for him. There was a queer twist in her stomach, a little like nausea and even a bit like unsettled nerves as he made a rumbling sound that started low in his chest and worked its way upward. The knot twisted tighter.

_Well. This was a damned good idea. _There was a taste of blood in her mouth, though she hadn't bitten herself. All she could smell was Kai Lin's cruiser as it had burned, and something else that was a little like burning hair-

"A turian captain might not be the best person for you to be seen talking to..." Another rumble, followed by an outward flare of a mandible, "under the circumstances." He said that last part very seriously, a bit too worn for politeness, but too much of a uniform to engage in pointless bitching over a very _bad _day.

The smell of burning hair faded, though she still tasted copper wiring in her mouth. She grunted, made a show of popping her jaw using her hand. The captain remained unimpressed as far as she could tell, but now that he was actually _looking_ at her, he didn't shift his eyes away. She flashed what _felt_ like it ought to be a lazy smile and hoped that her teeth weren't bloody for some reason. _It feels like there should be blood, where's the blood-_ "It would be hard for me to get in more trouble today than I'm already in, captain. Are you telling me to give it a shot?"

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><p>She told him her name was Tess- a short, soft hiss of a noise not unlike those made by the insects that always managed to get past the door of the Victus home in spite of the large number of credits his mother had invested in bug control. Tenacious bugs, Garrus often had to stomp on them no less than three times, making certain the flat of his boot well and truly <em>squished<em> the bluish things into the floor to be certain they were dead. "Tess- yes, like _that_ Shepard," was how she'd put it, her tone deadpan even if she almost seemed to be laughing at herself. There was a sheen of sweat on her face and she had as much trouble not staring at _him_ as he had not gawking at her. "There are about forty of us. Right now the big name is Gabby."

There had been an awkward pause, followed by a _clumsy:_"Damned bad luck about your ship. I wanted to tell you."

He said he was "Garrus- Captain Garrus. Victus, in fact. Like _that_ Garrus and _that_ Victus." His own moment of silence had been equally awkward, throat gone tight. "If anything, I'd say most of us were pretty damned lucky. We aren't dead." Seized with a growing, inexplicable feeling that he was running low on time to do _something,_ he shoved out a clumsy hand for her to shake, regarding it with horror as he nearly punched her in the gut in the process. The doors behind him were supposed to be locked, air tight and soundproof, but he was utterly certain he heard one of his crew members laugh. There was a tinge of bitterness to the sound, no doubt a clear indication Garrus would have to work to regain the respect of his men after such an ill-fated first flight. _Shit,_he thought, resigned and somehow, not as concerned as he ought to be. That was a sure sign the crash had shaken up his priorities.

She laughed at that, more a bark of laughter than anything delicate or pleasant to the ear. Somehow, he had the very clear impression she was rattled at the sight of a turian this close up and just damned good at hiding it. Tess said, "You're _kidding,"_and took his hand, blunt in her observation and clearly ignoring the fact he'd almost planted his fist in her kidney. He'd caught her reflexive twitch as his hand swung out, brushing against her side. "Garrus walks away from another crash."

It was with mounting surprise he listened to the approach of one of the Stand's five good shuttles as it hovered in the air some feet past an oily dark smear that Garrus realized was part of the reason he'd been smelling a war zone this far away from the _Kara II_. "You know," he started, the words thick and clumsy in his mouth. Feeling this off-balance was new to him. He disliked it. _Spirits, they do work fast here._

He couldn't see who the pilot was, but found it in himself to be impressed at how quickly the security detail of the colony was mobilizing to see to their needs and get them out of _their_ area of Normandy. "For what it's worth, the men and I were supposed to have a week's shore leave after delivering our shipment to Urdnot." _This isn't a proper use of your time._

Garrus was becoming aware of a dully growing ache in his hand. It took him another ten seconds to realize they still had fingers linked, squeezing tightly enough it probably hurt her more than it did him. Reluctantly, he eased off the pressure. Her nails continued to dig straight through the tough cloth of his military grade gloves. When she smiled, the expression was strained, causing him to wonder if he'd made a critical mistake-

"You get down there to Urdnot in a couple days, buzz me on the extranet," she finally answered. "Give me a heads up so I can get some transport first. It can be hell to get around out here. We'll go out into the hills and I'll show you the best view around-" This close, he could see a mole on her arm beneath the short sleeves of her shirt, wanted to run his fingers over it in spite of the fact there were wounded men and duties that should be the focus of any decent captain. That shuttle would take him back to everything he ought to put first. All at once, it seemed as if it couldn't land quickly enough.

"Right."

* * *

><p>As much as Garrus had disliked the idea of leaving Lieutenant Corinthus in charge of what was left of the <em>Kara II <em>on the... sojourn to Shepard's Stand, it had been the best call to make at the time. His instincts had paid off, as the wounded were well stabilized and the short supply of turian medi-gel had been used judiciously when he and the three crewmen who'd gone with the colonists returned. Unfortunately, they'd returned with little more than a couple of humans, the shuttle that had brought them all back to the crash site, and the assurance that the Urdnot leathers were bringing their shuttles to get them back to base.

Garrus took his lumps the way any turian officer ought to on Urdnot, head-butting krogan and setting his team loose on one another to let them work the rage out of their systems as the Alliance began to count up the losses. The short casualty list was nearly miraculous. Nonetheless, he couldn't help the way he'd grit his teeth when he'd taken a look at the tally passed over by Yeoman Chellick.

Three men dead.

Twenty crates of dextro protein-based foods lost.

Cause of warning alarm and last minute failure of landing procedure? _- Unknown._

Investigation ongoing.

Leave was delayed by two days after their late arrival, allowing the turian crew less time to blow off steam than he'd promised. 'Going wild' on the military base of a mostly unsettled planet didn't present the limited options that had concerned him at first. While the others drank and swapped stories about various scars, Garrus practiced his sharpshooting and debated calibrations. Then, there were the various _things _that tended to crop up when one was a visiting officer. Privately_,_he welcomed the flurry of activity that seemed to spiral around a captain, preferring not to dwell on the recriminations that would await him on Palaven in favor of actually getting some damned work done.

There were... _drinks_ those first nights, as well as the eager company of a turian engineer who suggested she test his reach against her flexibility. Their fight had gone on for quite a while, until they were both sweating and swaying on their feet. In private, they'd held a one time tie-breaker. In spite of being exhausted, he'd been unable to sleep well after they had finished. Laying in bed with a willing, dextrous turian woman ought to have been the stuff of which dreams were made. Garrus did, in fact, dream. Some of it was pleasant. Most of it wasn't.

* * *

><p><em>Brilliant flashes of light along the surface of N7 insignias. Spinning a human woman high up along the Citadel and listening to her laugh at how close they came to the edge of the platform-<em>

_"It's going to be one hell of a short war if you drop me!"_

_Smooth, metallic playing cards, a dull ache of hunger in his stomach. Looking out the wreckage of the ship to the verdant expanse where they'd all decided to build Shepard's Stand-_

_"I have to admit, Tali. It's a quieter way to go than I expected. How about you?"_

_Frantically gathering evidence against a turian Spectre, utterly certain in the knowledge that if he was fast enough, no one else would have reason to investigate the matter and or set foot on Eden Prime. London looming in the distance-_

* * *

><p>Garrus woke that night, drenched in his own sweat and with a scowling bedmate looming over him. She kicked him out of her room for talking about other women in his sleep. He didn't really ask her what names he might have dropped, but he was honestly glad to be collecting his civilians and making a fast track back to his own quarters. Once again, he could smell ozone and burning hair, the acrid reek following him clear back to his room. It hovered about him like a cloud as he dropped in front of the extranet terminal in the corner of his cramped quarters.<p>

Though his head was spinning more than it should have been, he was trained to wake up and be clear-headed at a moment's notice. That made it easy to compose the e-mail message. He was awake enough not to worry about spelling, just dim _enough _not to worry about the implications of what he was doing

_'Still want to show me that view?' _he sent to_'dontcallmecommander. horseheadnebula. alpha.'_

Garrus steepled his fingers and waited, leaning slightly forward in his chair.

_dontcallmecommander. horseheadnebula. alpha_ responds to_vigilantesalary. apienscrest. gamma:_

_'Consider me seduced, smooth talker.'_


	4. Two Consenting Adults

**Comfortable Old Boots  
>Chapter Four: Two Consenting Adults <strong>

* * *

><p>The initial plan had been to meet in the middle. There was probably some metaphor to be derived from <em>that<em>, but Garrus didn't care to turn geography into an allegory for interspecies social conflict. The area between Urdnot OP and the crash site where Garrus had taken a hopefully superficial blow to his military career was all rugged hills and crags. The entire stretch dotted with lush, green plants and blood-sucking insects large enough to drop a krogan in the middle of a mating frenzy. Thousand year-old trees stretched toward the sky, interlaced with numerous streams and waterfalls. Because of that, getting from one place to another was tricky and slow for the battered old Mako reconstructions the Stand preferred to use for travel. Air travel was preferred, but rarely used 'for the fun of it.'

When one didn't know when the year's supply of fuel replicators would arrive, long pleasure drives that used up precious resources were _discouraged._ He'd suspected that Tess using one of the Stand's few shuttles would be out of the question. From what he could see, very few of the human colonists even had _personal_ shuttle cars for use. _His_ situation was different. Urdnot being a small military outpost, it nonetheless had all the trappings and outfitting one would expect. If a captain wanted to go out for fresh air, the captain would damned well fill out the paperwork for a shuttle car and _go get some air._

_War is in the Victus blood. Remember that when they start shooting._ The car hissed and steamed its way to the ground, tilting a bit awkwardly on uneven terrain. He could see Tess off in the distance- he'd discretely run a scan on her with his visor when they'd first met and one of the stats flung back at him was an impressive 'SIX FEET TWO INCHES/187.96 CENTIMETERS.' Her height made her very hard to miss. Being 'hard to miss' made it hard 'not to stare', in his case. Gawking the way he had in lockup was out of the question- he was a man of action, not a man to stand on the sidelines and wait for someone to hold his hands when it came to a potential _liaison._

She looked dead at him- not at the shuttle, as if she were sighting him down the scope of a sniper rifle. Target acquired. Tess didn't smile. She didn't tilt her hip in a flirtatious way or even wave. She simply _moved_ for him, unstoppable as a tungsten round and not paying the slightest bit of attention to the drizzle of rain from above.

"_Shit,"_ he heard Geoffrey Moreau say. _Was_his name Geoffrey? "Can't you just take up kakliosaur hunting? Or knitting?"

Garrus popped the door and waited, pointedly ignoring the wary looks aimed in his direction by overworked people heading home after a long day of laboring in greenhouses and tending to the large, native beasts that provided most of their meat. He counted one, two, _threefourfive _colonists who clustered together, unable to hear their speculative whispers and not particularly caring unless firearms were about to come out. He recognized another- Miranda Donnelly, who somehow managed to remain pristine and lovely in her rather human way.

Tess strode past her- probably not a beauty by human standards, and towering over the Shepard in a way that made Garrus feel that Donnelly's title fit _her_ better. She walked like a woman who had places to be and didn't care to hide the fact from the rest of the world. 'Shepard' was a damned stupid name for a political figure, but he didn't want to think about 'Shepard' too long with Shepard _this_ and Shepard _that_ written over everything about the Stand.

She was dirty as any of the others and _like them,_she sported a small firearm on her hip in spite of the fact they'd all been digging around in the dirt all day. Somehow overdressed in his civilians, he regarded her from the corner of one eye as the door slid closed from above. The shields and windows partially obscured the faces of the Stand's citizens from view. For many reasons, Garrus wasn't sad to see them go.

"_'dontcallmecommander'?_" he asked. She'd been in the shuttle little more than seconds, but the silence had become oppressive the moment the door had closed. There was a faint sort of... static in the air, probably a sign the shuttle needed to go in for repairs when he returned to base. The hairs on her arms were standing up, though damned if that wasn't a pointless thing for him to notice. _Not just my imagination, then. The air feels strange._ "You don't strike me as..." He rumbled low in his throat. Shifting the shuttle to flight provided a rather convenient reason to stop gaping at her. "_Hmm._ A woman who is anti-military. You know. Considering the circumstances." _Spirits. 'Circumstances' is one way to put it._

"_'vigilantesalary?'_" she countered wryly, crossing her arms over her chest and tipping her head back to smirk at the shuttle ceiling. If he had trouble not watching her, _she _was having problems looking directly at him. She smelled faintly of sweat, sun-browned skin a sharp contrast with garish red hair that probably didn't occur naturally among humans. He wanted to pull the tie from it and run his fingers through the whole, tangled mess. "We're not doing anything to jeopardize your career. No laws being broken- just two consenting adults going out to appreciate some history."

'Two consenting adults.' Those _particular _words floated there between them, somehow heavier than the quiet.

The battered duffel bag she'd settled on to her lap was telling. Garrus did his best to keep two and two from adding up to four in case this once, the number actually happened to add up to five. "Huh," he said.

"Huh," she echoed.

"So." Rain was still pattering down from the gray sky above. He turned on the rain shield without doing much more than feeling around for the button. Once again, his tongue felt like lead in his mouth. "The weather is nice."

"Yeah." She flexed a dirty knee. He tried not to glance down as the skin there drew tighter over the joint, the angle making it look a little _knobby-_ as if she were a turian female and not a human. There was a light dusting of hair on her bare legs. He thought about complementing her on her 'fringe' and then decided against it. "It's nice we're actually get some _rain_out here right now. Good sign for the crops."

_Compliment her fringe._ It had been very easy to do just that with Lavinia back at the base. What he said instead was: "Do you... do much in the way of farm exports at Shepard's Stand? I hadn't realized it was an agricultural community. Maybe I should have, since I've never read reports of... mining or research outposts on this part of the planet." _Dammit._

She flexed her leg again, then rolled a wide shoulder. It drew the white cloth of her shirt tight across her chest, emphasizing bits of her Garrus mostly ignored in human women. However, there were times in his adolescence when he'd wondered if he might have a _thing _for humans. Those were moments when light hit a female's garish, dyed hair, or when some of those same Alliance women dropped their blockier, male counterparts in a way that was particularly vicious. He particularly noticed them when he went to the firing range on Omega. Five-fingered hands, smooth and practiced.

"Not much. Normandian cannabis, mostly."

"Hrm. That explains why David kept offering my men something to eat."

"Anderson's a good man," she told him simply, and with the unshakable sort of conviction that actually gave him pause. She said that as a statement of fact. The grass here is green. It is raining outside. Anderson David is a good man and _nothing_in the galaxy will goddamned change that in my eyes.

Then, wordless space stretched before them again. He somehow imagined that the quiet grew taut, threatening to snap. There were numerous things he could say to break the ice: 'I thought redheads had gone extinct,' or perhaps, 'What's it like, growing recreational drugs on a jungle planet?' Last but not least, 'You're a very large woman. Have you considered joining the Alliance military?'

_No, Garrus. I don't think so._

* * *

><p>Tess never had trouble being the initiator. She was from a long line of initiators and general shit-stirrers. She'd whip off belts, set weapons to safety and see to it that everything was properly holstered before the night was out. If she was lucky enough, she'd be out the bedroom door before whoever it was who happened to be visiting the colony woke up to an empty bed and the realization that <em>'wait, man. She used me for sex.'<em>It was a useful strategy, one most of the men she'd slept with had appreciated unless being left first stung overblown male pride. Kai Lin Xiu was another story that seemed dirty, unfinished- and hopefully with some sort of ending where good triumphed over evil and dogs came back from the dead.

"I was going to take a bath," she admitted to Garrus, not particularly apologetic, but self-conscious enough that she wanted him to understand she was going to make some _effort_ for him. _'I was going to take a bath, but I got distracted by something more important than a date.'_ No. That wouldn't end in a particularly _good_night for either of them. The truth would have to be thrown right out the window. Increasingly irritated with herself, she searched for a more appropriate segue than 'pull over and fly your ship through my Omega-4 relay.'

Whatever she _would_ have said to him- some pickup line about what he might have washed his pants in- was clearly best left unsaid. It helped that he chose that exact _second _to found his own verbal footing. Mostly. "No. It's fine. Your hair looks good," he rumbled, the sound reverberating upward. Her hair was tied back, curly and frizzed from the humidity. "And your waist is-" The turian coughed once. "Very supportive."

_Hm._ She inhaled a ragged breath, prodding at the bag of clean clothing, oils, instructional pamphlets and _precautionary_ medicine in case of ingestion or particularly enthusiastic... drippings. Everything had been nice, neat and prepared but for Tess Shepard Jane Helen KcKay herself. Her legs hadn't been shaved, she was wearing 'work' clothes and underwear that had small holes in it. She'd had just enough time to dart behind a tree when she'd heard the shuttle-car to _yank_ off her bra and stuff it into the bag, believing it to be a signal _universal_among the species. But her hair looked good. And her waist was very supportive. "Oh," she said flatly. "Thank you?"

Conversation fell flatter than her response. Again.

_Taptaptap._ Her fingertips bumped rhythmically against duraweave mesh. It was the same sound as the rain pattering against the shuttle. _Taptaptap._She stifled a rather obvious 'yawn', stretching just enough to arch her back and 'unintentionally' put a few things on display. He'd started talking again, something she ought to be paying attention to instead of trying to find her balls and take what she wanted from Garrus Victus.

He looked at her again, in that corner-of-the-eye way men used when they felt they weren't supposed to look but _had to_ before their heads exploded from the strain. It shouldn't have taken so _little_ to cause her nipples grow tight against the worn cloth of her shirt, but that really was _all she needed _to get going. _I watched instructional videos, you bastard,_ she thought darkly, drumming her fingertips along the buckle of her seatbelt now. _Instructional videos to prevent potential injury-_

"That's why..."

She could _see_ the bead of sweat running down the back of his neck. Eyes narrow, she frowned at the single, offensive droplet, stretching her arms above her head a second time. She inhaled deeply, holding the breath longer than was necessary before letting it out. _Take the bait, damn you._

"... the, ah, the... scope of O-Sec operations is _unfortunately limited on-"_ He gave the steering wheel a sudden _jerk_, causing the shuttle car to sputter and bob in protest. He quickly righted them, though his teeth were quite suddenly bared. "Tess, I'm drowning. _Come on and throw me a bone here."_Garrus was exasperated, which struck her as far damned better than clumsy and fumbling.

_Not a chance we're both going to let it play out like a damned prom date._She rolled her neck about on her shoulders, slow and precise enough that she heard several little pops. A dull, insistent ache was growing in the pit of her stomach, causing her to shift very deliberately into the seat.

Sex was like war, she'd once heard from some person in some place she couldn't rightly recall. Sex was like war because in the end, someone always had to make the first move. She unfastened her seatbelt with rain-damp fingers, pulled her shirt right over her head and pretended it didn't get caught on her hair band, leaving her to struggle beneath the tent of fabric before she succeeded in tossing it to the floor. Her skin was splotchy from all the twisting about, but the last thing she wanted him to notice her right now was her _complexion._

"_Garrus? You throw me a bone."_

Sometimes, the worst lines were the most appropriate for the situation.


	5. Tiebreaker

**Note: Clumsily-written sexual content abounds in this chapter.**

**Comfortable Old Boots  
>Chapter Five: Tiebreaker<strong>

* * *

><p>Somewhere around the reality of breasts waved under his nose and the fact that no man alive would be able to fly a ship in his position, Garrus was seized by an odd, calm certainty that he'd seen a courtship play out this way in the past. Airborne, just taking a break from responsibilities and letting words lead them on-<p>

* * *

><p><em>So, there they were, talking about chances and painful betrayals. They spoke of tension and war while he pretended not to notice he was already in a much better mood than he'd been on Omega, even considering all the talk of relays and suicide missions. They joked, spoke seriously, smirked a bit before the conversation came full circle. Death. War. Preparations.<em>

_They'd crawled through mud and hauled themselves through the ruins of Ilos together. He'd seen the bright crackle and the momentary flash of madness in her eyes when her mind was twisted with visions of Protheans and Reapers. She'd dropped down next to him on that bridge in Omega as he'd choked and gasped, the knees of her armor stained with what had probably been bits of his face at one time. After all that, it was hard for him not to see the truth of her, right down to her long held grudges, her vices and her wide mean streak. _

_What he didn't see coming was the way she tilted her head toward him, looked down the length of her strong, patrician nose and smiled sidelong. It was a smile that said 'come hither' and might as well have punched him in the gut the way he felt it knock the wind out of him. "It sounds like you're carrying your tension. Maybe I could help you get rid of it."_

_In hindsight, he really should have suspected. Every soldier had a certain someone on every spaceport in the galaxy. Neither of them found any reason to deny themselves simply because Death loomed on the horizon. "I, ah, didn't think you'd feel like sparring, Commander." _

"_What if we skipped right to the tiebreaker? We could test your reach... and my flexibility-"_

* * *

><p>"<em>Fuck,"<em> Garrus hissed out. "I won't argue with that-" He preferred other four-letter words, but that one fit the situation all too well. He couldn't see straight for a moment, blinking several times until the shadows that had flickered before his eyes were gone. _I'll worry about my sanity after I've worked off this stress- _He heard the rustle of her hand over camouflage shorts, brushing over her lap before settling on his thigh. Her palm was warm and her fingers long and slightly sinewy, digging in hard enough to hurt a human man but just enough a thrill shot down Garrus' spine to settle in his groin.

Plates began to _shift _down between his legs, meant to allow his growing erection to escape his carapace. His pants had other ideas, keeping him compressed and almost in pain if he moved the wrong way. He wondered if he'd trimmed his talons enough, if he'd chosen gloves of the appropriate thickness.

"_Pull over,"_ she ordered, deep and urgent, as if the fate of the galaxy rested on the two of them getting out of their clothes right then.

The pupils of his eyes contracted to small, dark pinpricks as he scanned the nav coordinates for an acceptable place to land. Normally, Garrus drove the way he tried to live- controlled, careful and precise. That evening, with the rain pouring down in a bizarre skyscape of storm and twilight, he nearly crashed the shuttle along the downward slope of a hill. They slid forward in their seats, the bag flying off of Tess' lap and to the floor. He cursed a second time, even as he fumbled for the clasps on his pants. Damages paperwork would be dealt with at Urdnot. Later.

"_Nice,"_ she grunted as she yanked at the buckle of her arms belt. He smirked in spite of himself, ripping his own seat belt away and freeing himself from his pants almost simultaneously. His erection sprang free as she slithered across the passenger side and toward him, so close he could already feel the heat from her tanned, naked skin.

Her nipples brushed against his arm, then his chest. He'd left his shirt on, but he was hyper aware of every shift of her sleekly muscled waist and of the contrasting softness of her breasts when she pressed against him. All at once, Garrus wasn't worried about doing the wrong thing. _"Hn. Only a turian could have managed to pull off a dangerous landing like that-"_ He grabbed her shoulders, bared his teeth in a sharp snarl to match her own and hauled her the rest of the way over to his side of the car. It hurt her, but she only smiled, biting at the rough skin along his jawline.

"We'll see about _that._" She struggled to right herself, seemingly giddy with laughter as the two of them found an odd, but comfortable position around shuttle parts, knee spurs and firearms. Between the two of them, they were likely breaking a minimum of ten safety regulations.

"Seems so-" Once they'd properly settled, Garrus was a little surprised by the way she was on him all at once, strong thighs legs straddling him. She rolled her hips, rolled them just enough to trap his length between them and keep it delicately pinned there. "Spirits, Tess," he hissed into her shoulder, releasing his hold on her arms to yank at tough, military-grade cloth. At that moment, he'd never hated an enemy the way he hated her shorts. She kissed his neck, his jawline, not at all hesitant like the women in the vids he'd watched the night before. _Be careful. It's different with humans-_

Well. Who cares if it plays out like a bad prom date? No harm in trying to have good sex in the front seat of a car. We're doing the galaxy a favor trying to figure it out. She arched enough the tip of him pressed against her navel, felt the moisture that had gathered at the dark, gray head seeping in. Her skin prickled slightly, leaving her glad of the antihistamine gel stashed away in her bag._"I read on .zeta that turian men have a baculum." Just unzip my- unzip them n-_

He went rigid all over as she rolled herself back up, weight precariously balanced on her knees. Nonetheless, careful, but inexperienced fingers kept right on navigating numerous hooks and buttons. _"I don't even know what that is,"_ he gasped, jerking his hips helplessly after her and getting little more than an accidental brush along her lower stomach for his efforts. Fluid continued to build up at the tip of him, only to swiped away at the last moment with the pad of her thumb. He jerked again, then drew out a long hiss of a breath as she drew a line of pre-ejaculate along her sharp hipbone.

"_We'll make do without-"_

Garrus didn't give her a chance to finish, lurching to one side so he could grab the melee blade attachment anchored beneath the steering wheel beside his emergency pistol. It was her turn to tense, though the wariness faded from her face as quickly as it had sparked to life. He tapped the flat of the knife along her hip, warned her raggedly: _"Don't move. I don't want to slip and hurt you-"_

She quirked a corner of her mouth, steadied herself and grabbed on to his shoulders. _"You cut me with that and it's your ass."_

He came too damned close to cutting himself. There wasn't enough base to the attachment to keep a steady grip, and he was slicing away from her. It was worth it when he was able to toss the scrap of metal aside, take two handfuls of surprisingly sturdy cloth and tear with all his strength. _"Worth the risk-"_ he lied to her as the sharp _rip_of fabric met their ears. He breathed in deeply, took in the musky, human smell of her and did exactly what every turian in every adult vid on the extranet did at this point: He opened his mouth to say-

_"I took an antihistamine in case I was allergic to your spit."_

-something he'd already forgotten. He faltered, hands lingering at the band of faded white cotton underwear he'd left in place for some minimal protection between them. Just in case any potential allergic reactions might be more intense than they'd thought. His erection flagged slightly, something she was unable to miss. _"It's a little too late to be having this talk-" _

Her eyes narrowed. _Oh, hell, not this time-_ Garrus rallied valiantly to save the mood, shoving his hand beneath the scraps of her pants and damp, white material. The gloves where thick enough to protect her from his talons. Some small mercy. Heavy-lidded eyes rolled _upward_ then, her hips following suit.

_Oh thank god he has someideaofwheretheclitorisis-_ The V of two enterprising fingers slid between her legs, the tips rolling over wet folds and then pressing harder until they found the small knot of flesh nestled between all that skin. _"Goddammit, did you take th- hhhhah, oh, God, Garrus, hold your fingers like that-"_ She shook her head hard, tried again and only wound up gasping garbled words into what she hoped was his ear. There was a lot of spiking on a turian, on the head, on the knees, right down to a slight ridging along his sex that made it obvious why the porn vids used all those_ oils_ to make it easier with protective gloves and ridges. _ Yeah, no, not going to need those, oh, fuck, oh fuckoh- _

"_God, careful, not so hard-" _The shuttle seats creaked a little with each clumsy, hurried motion. There was no real room to thrash, to buck or to well and truly screw properly unless either one of them felt like relocating to the back or even to the passenger's seat. Neither of them did. What they were doing was clumsy, rushed and utterly graceless. While they'd have no hope of explaining it to anyone, much less each other, the grinding and the licking and the _biting_ seemed a long overdue _'hello, how have you been? Long time no see.' _

His paint was smearing over the deep gray of his skin, tinting his sweat blue and leaving bright marks over her face. Most of it was exertion, but the rest was caused by the unpracticed nudging of foreheads and kisses given to a mouth that had little idea of how to handle rather aggressive human lips that kept pressing along the corners of his own. _"Hhhhah-"_ he hissed, pushing his hips up each time her five-fingered hand slid down. _"You be careful, you'll tearyourmouth-"_

"_Idon'tcare,"_ she gasped, inhaling strange, hitched breaths that let Garrus know she was close, that he was doing this right. He fought the very turian instinct to sink his teeth into the soft place where Tess' neck met her shoulder, hidden somewhere beneath all that hair human women seemed to have on their heads. 'Not so hard,' she'd said just a second ago, and while they weren't gentle with one another, the last thing he wanted to do was hurt her._ "It's just blood-"_

Garrus called her by all of the names he could remember- Tess Shepard Something-Something-McKay, holding on to the 'Tess' and the 'Shepard' before the many others flew from his increasingly narrow reality. She ran her tongue along the side of his face, velvety insides gripping his third finger with a strange rhythm that fascinated him. The taste of the paint on her tongue caused her to sputter, though she rallied and leaned in enough she could fasten her lips to the side of a crest spike and _suck. _

The gesture was messy and executed with all the skill of a turian female taking a mate to bed for the first time. It didn't matter. She made the effort and because she had, he _responded_. Garrus pulled his fingers from her and tried to roll them both. He wanted to be on top of her, pushing _inside_ and-

His elbow slammed hard into the window. Her ass hit the car horn, sending a loud _honk_ into the stormy evening. They cursed simultaneously- Garrus twice, as one of her breasts smacked him right in the face when she lunged as far from the steering wheel as she could get. He fell back against his seat from the sheer surprise of impact, suddenly all too aware of what might have happened if her own hand had twisted just the wrong way at just the wrong moment.

Wide-eyed, she stared at him before laughing, the sound shaky. _"We'll plant your flag on the Normandy when we're on level terrain."_

He tipped his head back, managed a laugh of his own when she grabbed his wrist with her free hand and shoved it right back between her legs. _"You can't blame me for trying." _

"_I sure as hell can't-"_

The rasp of cloth between them was growing more uncomfortable, but as she pushed herself harder and harder into the apex of his fingers, he cared less and less. Timeless darkness and hot, throbbing _pressure_ edged out rational thought. His world narrowed to the cramped, overheated car with its steamed windows and stink of sex. Consciousness was limited to the need to thrust, rub, to take the human hand braced at the back of his neck and to slide it atop his own where he played with her, wet and hot and ready and _Spirits he was going to-_

Garrus came in a short, sudden spurt beneath the arch of her body, catching her on the side of the face, and her coarse, wiry hair. The sight was intensely, viciously satisfying, enough so that he'd have smeared it into her skin if not for the dull realization she hadn't come. _"Shit,"_ he managed, hardly able to get the word out. _"Shit, let me-"_ She didn't hear his almost incoherent apology as she shifted on his lap, her fingers still twined with his, and deep lines of concentration etched on her face. Dazed, he began to saw the third digit of his hand in and out of her once more, barely aware of the erratic flutter of muscle or the shudders that wracked her body.

She wailed when she climaxed, cried as if the world was collapsing all around them. He barely managed to catch her as her knees gave out, didn't notice her curse as her hip knocked solidly against some part of the shuttle he didn't care about. There was a long, watery smear from her palm on the window, reminiscent of something he'd seen in some human vid made when her race traveled almost entirely on water and all of them had worn hats. Later on, he'd probably find the comparison pretty damned funny. Right now, the sight made him feel like patting himself on the back for a job well done.

"_God,"_ she gasped heavily, and he didn't know how to react when she grabbed his face in both hands and shoved her tongue into his mouth, navigating the two rows of dangerously sharp teeth through the gap at the front. _" You smell like a pine forest and taste like a barbecue, you beautiful turian son of a bitch."_

"_The fleet's happy to be of service," _he mumbled right back, thinking himself clever as could be while caught up in the first moments of emotion that so often followed a good, hard orgasm. I walked away from a ship crash, Garrus recalled through the bright candle haze of afterglow, though he why he remembered now, he didn't know. He smiled to himself, the expression all sharp teeth and bittersweet. _"It's a damned fine night to be alive."_

She shot him a quizzical look, but laughed again, her head falling forward against his shoulder. _"It's good,"_ she agreed drowsily.

Neither one of them spoke for a while after that, struggling to cling to the warm haze in their bellies. It was unfortunate and inevitable that they weren't able to enjoy the damp quiet for long. After all, they were locked in a position in the driver's seat that was so cramped and uncomfortable, neither one of them wanted to find out how much worse it would get once they tried to move.

Tess was the first of them to face facts, puffing a noisy breath along his shoulder."My leg's stuck," she announced unceremoniously. He roused himself enough to squint blearily at her right calf, wedged solidly between the door and the driver's seat. She grimaced, then gasped in a manner he found far _less_ attractive than the sounds she'd been making earlier. They sounded a little like a cross between a dying krogan and an asari matriarch trying to cover the signs of her indigestion.

"_Cramp?"_ he asked, resigned. He felt along her leg,finding muscles there bunched in a hard lump. He reached down further, grunted a bit when she unintentionally drove her heel into his wrist. _Cramp_.

"_I-"_ she wheezed, as if trying to dismiss a muscle spasm as something ridiculous to brush off, _"- have had plenty of shuttle sex. Just never in the driver's seat. Hold on, don't fall over-"_

"_Sorry for the bad manners."_ Shift. Twist. A careful flex of a toe in his civilian boots. No cramps. _"But every time I try to come up with something to say, I keep getting stuck on jokes about you in the driver's seat-"_ It seemed all too easy to say that to her, less easy not to look like an idiot when whatever he'd been 'holding on' for proved to be her finding the switch to put the seat back using her big toe.

The seat folded back. In spite of her vague warning, Garrus was unprepared. They smacked foreheads on the way down, while his penis damned near became a last minute casualty of vehicular warfare.

"_Huh. That wasn't much in the way of a warning."_

He felt her smile against his neck, leaving further traces of red, human blood, war paint and sticky fluids. That, too, was familiar, right down to the slight press of her teeth when the corners of her mouth twisted upward.

They remained as they were, waiting until their respective bits and pieces stopped sending up spasms at the slightest movement. It gave them each time to realize how quick they'd been, less than ten minutes in the air before they'd parked at the nearest convenient point so they could feel each other up. It certainly wasn't the best "first time" either of them had had, particularly with their bodies reminding them of why there were unspoken rules about how to have sex in the front seat.

"You're hanging out of your pants," Tess eventually pointed out, her eyes closed and bits of her hair in his mouth. She reached up, plucking out a few strands that had become woven around his own teeth as if they were a comb. Her body burned in where they'd rubbed together, nipples honest to God scraped from the friction between them even with his shirt on. Right now, she itched just enough to make her want to scratch, caring less about the scrapes and the bleeding. She didn't mind too much. No one decided to wake up next to a turian without knowing it would play out like an unintentional BDSM session. That was what why she'd brought medi-gel and watched vids.

"_Maybe. But we finally broke the ice."_

Damned if that didn't strike her as the funniest thing she'd heard all day, because she'd just been laid for the first time in a month and the world was now a _beautiful place._ She couldn't help the cackle of laughter, beginning the slow, rubber-kneed crawl back to the passenger's side of the shuttle. All three feet of it. Her knee smacked the gear shift, but that was better than landing on it with her legs spread. _"If that was the ice breaker you'd been looking for all this time, you should have asked." _

Garrus stretched an oddly bony arm toward her, toyed with a strand of her hair with its brown roots and his come that was drying there. The bastard was probably entirely too pleased with himself for that one. She let him have that satisfaction, particularly because 'the wet spot' was currently his lap. He drew out a slow and satisfied, _"Well. About that. I didn't need to do much in the way of-" _

She eyed him narrowly, letting only a little of her amusement show. Then she pinched the inside of his wrist, chipping a fingernail in the process. _"Something you want to say, Garrus?"_ He flexed his long fingers, still sticky from sex. She could see them handling a rifle very easily, thought one, single word that didn't reference firearms as much as she'd prefer: _Click._ That was it- just _click. _

_I could be in some real trouble here. The smart thing to do would be tell him to put the car right-the-fuck back in the air and fly them back to the Stand, where everyone would know she'd had turian fingers inside of her less than a week after blowing up Kai Lin's Mako Firebird._ This was often the part where she'd wait for her partner to fall asleep and then climb out his window.

The captain chuckled, almost to himself. His eyes were warm, which struck her as odd because they were completely inhuman. She liked the color of them- very pale blue, though she'd initially thought they were baby blue. His carapace seemed as if it should have been closer to slate gray, like the stones decorating Kelly Daniels' front yard. He was darker than that, more like steel when it wasn't catching light.

_Shit,_ Tess thought again. I could be in some real trouble here. _The sooner he's off of Normandy, the better._

In spite of how unsettled she found herself, sprawled out beside him and the odor of sex making them smell like an animal cage, she had trouble staying awake. Her lids were heavy and the quiet welcome instead of stifling now that they'd worked 'it' out of their systems. She didn't always fall asleep easily, prone to dreaming and restless nights. She'd also been raised by a man prone to waking her up for emergency drills by the time she was five. 'Here's a gun. A krogan battlemaster's outside ready to blow your brains out. What are you going to do, Shepard?'

Most of the McKay children were insomniacs.


	6. Wrend

**Comfortable Old Boots**  
><strong>Chapter Six: "Wrend."<strong>

* * *

><p>"<strong>Pull over!"<strong>

_She nearly flung herself from the ship, hellbent for leather and teeth clicking audibly as her head snapped forward, _back_. Scant minutes before they'd hand out a death sentence to their pilot and its entire race, she heard: "Shepard Commander. Good luck." Loyalty and trust that wasn't at all synthetic would be shot to shit for the sake of the greater good and the quarian fleet. There were less than two hours before she'd tell her turian lover that if he ever tried to comfort her about the still pile of machinery with its N7 shoulder guard again, she'd shoot him in the knee. _

_The galaxy had two months before the fall of Thessia, two months and one week before she'd step over shards of broken glass flooring to argue with the Illusive Man and come to the bone-deep realization that neither one of them would survive the war. They had two and a half months before London._

_Sitting on the ground beside her was a man, eating a steak off of one of the large trays the Alliance used in mess hall cafeterias. He was holding a plasma lighter in one hand, moving it slowly back and forth as if involved in some sort of solo, fucked up candlelight vigil. "You know, I've never been to London." he informed her, balancing his tray carefully on his lap. "Mordin and Thane probably wouldn't have been impressed by the city, would they?"_

"_Shut up, Kaidan." She primed the laser, all merciless, brutal efficiency as the Reaper screamed above them. "We'll talk after we've wrapped up the genocide." _

"_You know it was the right choice." When he spoke again, he had the voice of a woman and a data pad full of poetry had taken the place of his steak. There was a glint of light behind him, the Citadel Tower stretching toward the sky like a dragon's tooth. "Heads up, CO."_

_Silvery bones fell from the sky, a twisted monstrosity of the turian they'd belonged to in life. The targeting laser was ripped from her hands as she struggled against the construction, slamming them both into the mountains boxing them in. She heard a dull crunch, followed by a mechanical hiss of a voice: "Your species must know its place."_

_They twisted, struggled against one another as Kaidan with his woman-voice read aloud from his book. Her fists bled, knuckles swelling from numerous small breaks. "I'm running out of time, you idiot!" she snarled, spitting her blood onto the sharp angles of his skull._

_The dead turian opened his mouth and flashed her a razor-edged smile. She bared her own teeth at him in response, ridiculous laughter rising up in her throat. Legs kicking and throat tight as his skeletal fingers wrapped about her neck and raised her into the air, she barely noticed the little krogan children rushing about underfoot. She hooked her thumb into an empty eye socket, yanked his head to one side in the process._

"_How heavy-handed, Commander."_

_Sovereign shifted, watching them from above with infinite patience. Every motion of its massive legs was loud enough her eardrums popped. The skeleton looked past her for one long moment, empty sockets with one thumb jammed inside turned toward the Reaper. Then, he looked at __her, wriggling like a worm on a hook in his grasp. They were both bathed in impossibly hot, red light as millions of geth 'screamed.' She finally recognized the poem as something by Tennyson, the words somehow very important in their final moments. _So much for the homeworld,_ she thought. _

_The gates of hell opened, and Rannoch melted to red._

* * *

><p>Tess woke once in the night, just enough to realize she'd gone to sleep in the first place. Her dream was nothing more than a blur of unfamiliar faces and overly bright lights, but she was nauseous and the inside of the car felt ice cold. Her heart was pounding in her chest, while she could taste steak in her mouth. Garrus was beside her, all heavy, warm, and completely down for the count. Still hovering in that strange place where one was more asleep than aware of the world around them, she thought she must have rubbed at his shoulder, taking comfort from the feel of his body. "<em>Garrus,"<em> she slurred, giving him a shake.

He batted ineffectually at her hand, then seemed to _snap _awake all at once, reaching for the gun beneath the dash with a soldier's practice. "_What ?" _he garbled out, shooting her a hazy look and gradually lowering his hand down to his side. He was more aware of the world than _she_ at that point, wild-eyed and realizing it would have been very easy to strike her without meaning to do so. Waking up in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar woman shaking him was risky for her, at best. "_You can't just do that to a soldier-"_

Utterly unperturbed, she gazed at him in the stupid way universal to those _not quite awake._ She even smacked her lips once or twice, her breath sour from sleep. He could smell it, smell their sex and the salt tang of sweat long since dried. There was something a little like fear in the air, as well. _"What?"_ he breathed again, his own heart beating a rapid tattoo beneath his ribs. "_Bad dream?" _

"_No. It's cold. Mind if I come over there?"_

He rumbled quietly, gesturing in his general direction. It wasn't as warm as he'd expected in the shuttle-car, darkness and a steady pounding of rain from overhead having lowered the temperature outside. _"Here, don't poke yourself on my spurs."_ The position they settled into was fairly uncomfortable, but as his pulse slowed and he began to realize her body wasn't so soft for him to damage one of the arteries in her legs just by moving the wrong way, he relaxed. Sleep was surprisingly easy and dreamless for him that night, his body twisted in the small vehicle and her long, human hair caught in his mouth.

* * *

><p>When they well and truly roused themselves to face the day, it was near dawn and to the sound of soft screeching from tropical birds outside. Well. The soft screech of tropical birds or the very distant scream of a kakliosaur. One of her bare feet was in his lap, while the other leg was stretched out, the heel balancing just so against the dashboard of the shuttle-car. His jaw was hanging wide open, drool forming unattractively at the corner of his mouth.<p>

She opened a bloodshot, brown eye and regarded him from where she'd twisted up, having returned to the passenger's side sometime in the night. "Morning, soldier," she greeted in the smug manner of a woman who'd received exactly what she'd wanted before bed.

The words caused his fringe to prickle slightly. Garrus groaned, scrubbing an admittedly filthy hand down his face as hair-trigger senses brought him back to reality _all at once._ She'd been awake a few minutes before he had, he realized, as no one slept with one leg in the air. This time, she'd had the good sense not to say anything until he'd already started to come back to himself. The interior of the car was hot and sticky- no doubt leaving plenty of opportunities for jokes open to them if they chose to pursue that particular path.

"Morning yourself," he rumbled, feeling about the car's console so that he could turn the vehicle on and get some air circulating. Clearly, things warmed up quickly on Normandy. _Am I drooling?_

The shuttle came to life with nary a sound, little lights and graphs flickering across the console. This same flurry of activity brought with it cool air that whispered over their skin, raising goosebumps on her forearms. He noticed the moles on her shoulders more than he did her scraped breasts, reached a hand over to run his finger along the small brown spots, the way he'd wanted to the very first time she'd sauntered up to him in Shepard's Stand.

Tess shifted her leg just a _bit_ higher and let him have a very good look at the southernmost region of her colony. With her ponytail little more than a mass of fuzz on top of her head and her breath _less than fresh_, he nonetheless watched her with a great deal of interest. After all, he was still _male. It's probably too early for clumsy morning sex._ Well. It had was evening somewhere in the galaxy, and that was good enough for him.

A flicker of color on one of the many little screens caught his attention. Unfortunate for his sex life, but fortunate for his _actual _life. He was far more military and far less libido all at once, flaring his mandibles and buttoning his pants. "Wait. Scanners are picking up activity outside. Something big. Get your piece ready." He cast a sidelong glance at her face, meaning to add 'just in case' to reassure her. There was no fear in her expression, just a wary sort of alertness that made him feel faintly embarrassed for thinking she'd want to be shoved into the back seat and protected.

She frowned, flexed her heel slightly and started to say: _"Too quiet to be a kaklios-" _

The colonist never had a chance to finish that sentence, her sweaty foot slipping along the console as she started to sit up. They both froze- even Tess, who was left holding her leg at a decidedly odd angle- when the car bleeped a few times and the doors slid up, exposing them to the harsh light of day.  
>Both of them scrambled for their weapons in what had to be record time, albeit with more clumsy kicking and swearing on her part. They were, after all, parked on a random hill on a fairly unsettled planet. A 'presence' could be anything from a wandering animal to an admittedly <em>endangered<em>batarian slaver. Little red dots on a navpoint were rather vague at times.

Garrus found it telling that she reached for her gun belt before a shirt.

Years later, he still didn't know why that particular battlemaster happened to be outside such a _random_ shuttle in such a _random_ location, particularly considering krogan scouts didn't find much _to_ scout this close to Shepard's Stand.

Tess raised her pistol and aimed it right at the weaker spot of the newcomer's gut. Garrus had his own spare firearm out from beneath the dash, primed to fire and focused on what no doubt had to be one of the rapidly-multiplying krogan colonists "up the way" with whom the humans of the Stand were on increasingly poor terms. There was something going on with real estate in which Urdnot had absolutely no interest, but _that_ particular krogan was dressed for battle and _alone._It was a fairly safe assumption he wasn't scoping beachfront property.

Slit-pupiled eyes blinked at the pair of them. Pale yellow skin was as a sharp contrast to the deep red of the tough, outer hide. Most of the krogan around here, he noted, were exactly that color. contemptuous. His nostrils flared at the very clear smell of sex in the air- if Garrus could smell it so clearly, it had to be smacking _him _right in the face. _And if he rushed us now, it'd mean a messy death for all three of us._ As neither one of them had been reduced to a bloody smear on the upholstery, the turian relaxed slightly, but kept him sighted down the short barrel of the pistol. _Huh,_ he couldn't help but note. _He's smirking._

He leered at the pair for _just _a second, guffawed in a way that made the back of Garrus' neck flush blue. The way he studied the two of them was bemused and contemptuous all at the same time. It made him wonder how often the bastard happened upon this sort of situation. "McKay," he greeted flatly.

"Wrend," Tess returned, as if she wasn't mostly naked and covered with bloody welts. A moment later, she cleared her throat and reached down to pull her white shirt onto her lap. "Garrus." She paused again, setting her weapon to 'safe.' "Have you met Urdnot Wrend?"

The beginnings of a headache throbbed beneath his crest. "He's a rather recent acquaintance, sure."

"Wrend. This is Garrus."

"_Uh-huh." _

Neither colonist so much as twitched. Then, without another word, Urdnot Wrend turned his back to them and sauntered off, as if they weren't worth the trouble it took to keep grunting and jeering in stereotypical krogan fashion.

Garrus lowered his Kestrel III to his knee once he'd reset the safety mechanism, and wondered at the life of a colonist on this planet. He pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing to himself. _We should induct the humans here into the turian army. Shepard Donnelly alone would be enough to convince the Primarch._He thought it must have something to do with all that blood from the Normandy ship crew pumping through their veins.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, looked at him askance and smirked just a little. 'Well, what can you do?' is what _that_ expression read. Sore and bruised from a night of sex, on the warm and tropical planet where his ancestor had lived out the remainder of his days, Garrus leaned back in his seat, shut his eyes, and didn't even bother to close the doors.

* * *

><p>He was there for another two months. Getting ships from Point A to Point B often took weeks depending on the destination. Only two relays had been built since the Reaper War, their access controlled by the quarians and salarians who had been responsible for their engineering. Scientific teams funded by the Council had used plans from the Crucible Project created synthetic eezo for travel. That discovery had helped with 'the fuel crisis', but traffic didn't <em>flow<em> the way it had in the past. The last three centuries had been devoted to _recovery _and galactic stability, leaving technological advancement to take a back seat. As a result, Garrus was left on Normandy with the option to sit around with his 'thumbs' up his ass or to take his crew and perform routine sweeps outside the base while waiting for a salvage ship.

He opted for the sweeps and the scouting.

For the time being, his position in the turian military was somewhat in limbo. The crew responded to this new state of affairs as expected: seething, following orders delivered by the command at Urdnot base and picking off wild kakliosaur that wandered too close to the base in search of food. They were restless, but increasingly accepting of his authority in spite of that rocky first mission. He wrestled with crusty old officers who'd been stationed out here half their lives to get them better accommodations and more freedom on the base.

He waited. He paced, growing frustrated with regulations and protocol. He sent messages to Tess and she returned the favor.

They joked about meeting up at the bars on Omega, neither of them really understanding why they found the idea _funny_ in the first place. 'Battle scars' were compared through the vid comm, complete with the obligatory verbal pissing contests. Sleepless nights were spent talking, Garrus drinking turian brandy from a glass as she _speculated_ about the galaxy and the Reapers in a haze of cannabis smoke. One night, she'd set aside her concerns about unsecured comm channels and touched herself while he watched, her image hazy and crackling from the poor connection.

Emails gradually turned from flirting and bad innuendo to more personal matters, leaving him privately surprised at the _speed_ of the transition. He wrote what it was like to be the son of a political family growing up on Citadel-II, away from Palaven and underfoot of the Council. His mother, Sparatia, was next in line for the turian seat there. Sparatia Victus was 'old school', as the humans liked to say, intending on making it as difficult as possible for the drell to join their hanar counterparts as Councilors.

Garrus didn't let her in on that last part, as she'd once said she had a sister living with a drell on Omega. It was oddly pleasant to complain about family, though- something he'd never really do around other turians.

* * *

><p><em>vigilantesalary. apienscrest .gamma <em>sends to_ dontcallmecommander. horseheadnebula. alpha: _'_You know, my cousin ran away with a hanar five years ago. They just bought out the rights to the Blasto franchise.'_

* * *

><p><em>dontcallmecommander. horseheadnebula. alpha <em>responds to _vigilantesalary. apienscrest. gamma: 'This one is impressed by that one's devotion to classic cinema. Those... ones. Is it 'they?''_

* * *

><p><em>vigilantesalary .apienscrest. gamma <em>responds to_ dontcallmecommander .horseheadnebula. alpha: 'I'm afraid I don't actually have an answer to that question. I'll ask Delan and Li the next time I talk to them.'_

* * *

><p><em>dontcallmecommander. horseheadnebula. alpha <em>responds to _vigilantesalary. apienscrest. gamma: 'And does Delan have a 'lover in every port?''_

* * *

><p>Eventually, he let Tess in on the fact they had something in common. She and the other colonists weren't the only ones with a past tie to Commander Shepard. Garrus Vakarian's niece had married Primach Adrien Victus' grandson. <em>He<em> was just one of numerous descendants who sported the rather popular turian name. One full week passed before he received a message that said nothing more than: _'I'll be goddamned,'_ giving him the impression he'd made her uncomfortable. Privately disappointed, he'd resolved to say no more on the matter.

Her mother Karin was part Jewish, whatever that meant, and Tess had grown up with menorahs being shoved at her by one side of the family, dodging Christmas trees from the other. Currently, 'Hacksaw' McKay off on an Alliance ship serving as a medical officer and enjoying exotic, hard liquor. Out on Omega, Tess' father worked in 'collections', which he found a not so subtle indication Zaeed McKay was a gun for hire.

* * *

><p><em>dontcallmecommander. horseheadnebula. alpha <em>responds to _vigilantesalary. apienscrest. gamma:_ _Don't go rustling around in my family tree. You'll find too much Vega with a subtle hint of Moreau._

* * *

><p><em><em>vigilantesalary. apienscrest .gamma <em>sends to_ dontcallmecommander. horseheadnebula. alpha_ _'_That would explain why you look like you could snap a krogan's neck with just your ankles.'_

* * *

><p><em><em>dontcallmecommander. horseheadnebula. alpha <em>_responds to_ _vigilantesalary. apienscrest. gamma:_ 'Blow me, Victus. We're all inbred and tall on this "tropical paradise" of a colony.'_

* * *

><p><em><em>vigilantesalary. apienscrest .gamma <em>_sends to__ dontcallmecommander. horseheadnebula. alpha_'If I you were saying that to me in person while making air quotes with your fingers, I'd feel like I was at home. _

* * *

><p>They met when they could, irritated at their inability to get her a vaccine so they could <em>really <em>'go crazy on each other.' Instead, they did everything _but, _working one another into a frenzy before laughing and rolling away, spent, from the mess they'd made together. Afterward, they'd pass a bottle of liquor back and forth, one of those rare drinks turians on the base imported to share with their asari mates. She pointed out the constellations in the night sky overhead as he played invisible games of connect-the-dots with the freckles on her arms.

In hindsight, there were far worse ways Garrus could have spent those two months.


	7. A Fistful of Mud

**Comfortable Old Boots  
>Chapter Seven: A Fistful of Mud <strong>

* * *

><p>Society had not, in fact, entered a state of collapse when the original Mass Relays ceased to function. Doomsayers had predicted the downfall of the galaxy, howling and beating their chests in time with their proclamations: <em>The army Shepard had assembled would die of starvation in space. The krogan would overpopulate the Sol system, ultimately enslaving everyone else to use as a food source. The Reapers weren't really gone- no one realized they had simply been indoctrinated. <em>

To the best of Garrus' knowledge, none of those eventualities had come to pass.

However, people had become _scattered _as a result of the Reaper War_._ The Hierarchy was still finding settlements of turians descended from war refugees or stranded soldiers. _More_ often, military scouting ships found nothing more than bones or empty, makeshift buildings and broken water lines. Settlements becoming estranged from their homeworlds and parent races were now the norm. At barely twenty-six, Garrus had already met krogan musicians, Buddhist asari maidens- and salarians who didn't know the difference between mass and volume.

The short-lived races in particular developed their own customs and belief systems the longer they'd lived away from the center of the galactic community. A common example of this phenomenon were the human settlers of planet Normandy. Shepard Donnelly and her bunch were territorial, somehow _fierce, _and so inexplicably wrapped up in some imagined past they'd all lived through, that it was like trying to squeeze oneself through the crack in a door that had long been closed.

_Aliens not welcome. Please slide your key-card under the door. _

The night before Garrus left for Palaven to face a scowling board of military officials, he was finally allowed to see the place his ancestor had been put to rest. He didn't view this small victory as a good sign or bad- it simply _was, _and reinforced the idea that networking was the quickest way to success. After all, his grandfather had once spent three weeks arguing with some official here to reclaim some of Vakarian's personal possessions, and Lorik Victus had been rather close to the Primarch's seat at the time.

As he recalled from his grandfather's stories, Shepard Greg Westmoreland had been less than impressed by the fact. He'd begrudgingly sent Lorik away with a pair of boots and a battered old Vakarian insignia.

Somewhere between hazy, half-formed dreams and the heavy weight of the now extinct Vakarian name, he'd expected high pillars and polished, rare metals to honor the memory of Commander Shepard's crew. Instead, he was greeted by one large, upright ship wing, battered by the elements and smeared with black char he could make out even by the light of the plasma lanterns driven into the ground. Surrounding the _Normandy_ wing were stones that were harder to see- rock slabs of various size and shape. The effect was plain, crude, and suggested a group of stranded soldiers who spent more time trying to survive than focusing on aesthetics. His first impression of the memorial was... underwhelming, to say the least.

_So it wasn't poor vid work on that documentary. I owe Solana a five hundred tab. _

He'd arrived an hour earlier than agreed- something he had no intention of telling Tess when her poor, tortured brother ferried her over. (Garrus had long since decided he didn't want to know how she'd convinced him, or how many from the Stand had refused her transport before she'd been desperate enough to pester a _sibling_ recently back from Alliance duty.) Stupid as it was, he felt his first sight of the 'graveyard' was meant to be a private thing. _Not necessarily the best of ideas now. Crap._ He closed one blue eye and simply let himself... study that wedge of metal, wondering if pillars and shining statues would have been much better, in the end.

After five minutes of standing, staring up at the faded _Normandy SR-2 _logo etched by a laser at the wing's base, he shrugged off disappointment and gave in to a growing urge to pull off his boots. He tossed them aside and breathed in deeply, taking in the smells he'd learned to associate with the planet. Mold, from layer upon layer of dead leaves packed together over time. Wet earth. Grass and tree bark. Something faint that hinted at a potential rainstorm. Listening to the chirping of hidden bugs, he found himself... _walking_ the perimeter, around the semicircle of stone grave markers and weaving around thick, gnarled trees draped in green fringe.

Garrus wasn't a fanciful man by any stretch of the imagination, though he believed, as most turians did, in the spirits that embodied the galaxy around them. They shone more brightly in some places than others. Once he saw past the tangle of weeds and outwardly-forgotten gravesides, he couldn't help the impression this spot represented the collective spirit of the _Normandy_ crew quite well. Commander Tess Shepard, ill-fated Admiral Tali'Zorah vas Normandy, and all the other soldiers who had gone to London aboard that same ship. His ancestor was part of that, ashes having long since mingled with the ground here. _If that's the case, what does that make Shepard's Stand?_

With some small irritation, he stooped to pick up what even _he _recognized as a human condom wrapper, tossing it into the trash vaporizer anchored to one of the trees. Remote, almost _sacred_ location aside, teenagers _somehow _managed to find their way out here to indulge in certain activities. Some adolescent tendencies were the same across _all species._ Well. Apart from the salarians.

Batting away fist-sized insects using his omni-tool, picked his way along the hewn stones with their mostly obscured names, trying to make out which grave belonged to which crew member. Hissing briefly as he smacked a toe along the surface of one of them, he lingered, dropping down to one knee to brush a glaze of mud and moss from the half-hidden rock. Any writing had long since been worn down to faint scratches too difficult to read. Instead, he traced the surface with his fingers, flicking away a small, purple speck of a bug resting there.

**I M MO Y: **

**G R S KA IAN ND DI NA A LERS**

**AUG 218**

* * *

><p><em>Weakness and searing smoke<em>

_Garrus had experienced so much and lived so fully that the idea of death brought no fear_

_Wildfire scored the landscape. He didn't think of Commander Shepard, who would rightly become a golden idol to the galaxy in the years to come. He didn't think of the woman, all cigarette smoke and wicked humor, who had set herself aside to _become_ that figure. He didn't even think of the promise he'd made- to keep as many of them _alive_ as long as possible if she didn't survive the war. Garrus acted _because_ he was Garrus-Goddamned-Vakarian, because he didn't know how to, or want to die, a useless death._

"_Allers! Dammit, where are you? Hold on!"_

_It was almost funny- with all the death and damage he'd seen in his military career, he'd never realized how quickly grass and wood _burned.

* * *

><p>As if from a distance, he heard the shuttle land. The dull roar of Jimmy Lopez' skycar brought with it an acrid tang of grasses blackened by exhaust heat. He blinked- hard, snapping back to reality with a suddenness that left him dizzy. How long had he been there on that same ground, the <em>Normandy's<em> wing blotting out the light of the two moons overhead? _Shit. _Not bothering to stand, he fingered a barely-there scrap of letter mark using the tip of one talon. _Shit. The second I get back, another head scan to be sure-_

"_Garrus?" _

It was as if two women at once were speaking to him- or as if one was a blurred outline of the other, trailing impossibly close. When he jerked his head toward her, wild-eyed and truly concerned for his sanity in that moment, he could make out a faint sheen of antique armor. Even as a hazy _idea_, her presence overpowered Tess' own.

_Wait. Keep your head on your shoulders. You can do this. Whatever 'this' is-_ He sucked in a breath of blessedly cool, _clear_ air in an attempt to calm himself. His toes sank deeper into the ground as he shifted his legs to keep his balance. _This isn't the first time,_ he told himself, feeling something else bubble up alongside the sour tang in his mouth. _If it isn't the last, I'll keep it under wraps until I'm really a danger. There's no use worrying about the worst until it actually comes to pass. _

"I promised you history," Tess said from where she still stood, behind him and all at once _herself_, plain and simple. "So, here we a-" Her brows furrowed, brown eyes sweeping over his face. "Garrus?" She said his name slowly, oddly _serious_ without quite being concerned.

Collecting himself as best he could, Garrus looked _past_ her, toward the hulking man in the sleek, hovering skycar. By the expression on his broad-featured face, the driver made it obvious he was the fabled 'Jimmy.' He pointed two fingers at his very human eyes, then pointed them right back at Garrus. That was the universal signal for 'I'm watching you, and I have a gun.' At the moment, he didn't feel particularly concerned by the realization Tess' half-brother was the size of an asari dreadnought.

"You filled that promise a bit late," he answered, forcing a smile. The expression involved some twitching, a shifting of mandibles and a display of teeth that altogether formed an expression more unsettling than welcoming. Suddenly, the fact that he wasn't going to have sex tonight was more a relief than a disappointment. The thought of her crying his name in that strange, distorted way caused his skin to crawl.

"I don't think you'd have much to worry about if I were late, Garrus." This time, her voice was her own. There seemed to be a _joke_ in those words, but Garrus didn't know enough about human reproduction to assume she meant anything other than changing into various outfits and making sure nothing was stuck in her teeth. If anything, he thought she was making the sort of stereotypical joke that would earn a man a withering stare and the upraised middle finger he often saw flashed in human bars.

She let out a low whistle as she flicked a glance down at his two-toed feet, taking in the boots he'd tossed aside to walk about the area. He cleared his throat. "I was... getting in touch with all of this nature." Even to his own ears, he sounded stilted.

The time to feel ridiculous around her had long since passed, left behind after the first, clumsy fumbling that night in the car, or the second time, when they'd intended to fly to the spot Vakarian had died his hero's death. They'd pulled over after an hour's flight instead, flinging blankets to the ground and pulling off clothing, while he worried about rubbing against her too hard and she'd bitten his neck with enough ferocity she'd nearly chipped a tooth. They were here, just- later than they'd intended, and at a time when it seemed sex was almost _expected_ if not for location and Jimmy Lopez, whose presence seemed to hang about the place in spite of the fact he'd flown off to do whatever it was he was supposed to do while he waited. Check on kakliosaur migration or surveillance drones most likely.

"Put your head between your knees and count to ten," she gave him the bemused order while leaning forward to pull off her own boots. She wore layers of thick, heavy socks beneath them, the metallic tinge of insect repellent smoothed on her skin mingling with the sweat-tinged cloth. He smacked another huge mosquito from the air, blithely ignoring her. She didn't seem to mind, only adding, "mind you don't sit right on your own grave, though."

Garrus tensed all over again, fingers clenching and furrowing out a fistful of mud in the process. "It isn't my grave," he pointed out, more sharply than he'd intended._ Everything I'd read growing up about the Reaper War made it clear there weren't any remains to return to the Hierarchy._ Even if the ashes had been stored away in some sort of mausoleum instead of scattered, Vakarian's would be mixed with those of the woman who had died alongside him.

Tess paled, though he couldn't see it with only the dim lighting of the plasma lanterns flickering along her face. He _did_ see her falter, as if _struck_ in some strange way by his words. "_I know,"_ she told him, her voice low and a little- _flat_, somehow. Garrus shifted even further from the stone and patted the ground beside him, his moment of temper dying as soon as it had sparked. She gnawed on her chapped bottom lip, making him sweat a moment before she joined him in the dirt. Tipping her head back to study the looming wing of the _Normandy, _she went on_._ "Captain Victus is better company than some dead legend, don't you think?"

He watched her long legs instead of the wing, which made his head throb if he studied the damned sheet of metal more than a few seconds at a time. She slid one leg to the side, placing the bottom of her foot on top of his. They were a slipshod study of the differences between human and turian anatomy, his foot dwarfing her own. When she slid her big toe between his, he didn't bother to hide his brittle amusement. "Come to Citadel-II and you won't hear my name said that way."

"Mm," she replied noncommittally. She arched her back, twisted in just the right way that popping noises filled the air. He couldn't help but swallow, settling a hand on the small of her back and running a sharp-tipped finger along her spine. He felt her press into him then listened for- _something _in her, feeling foolish and relieved all at once when only 'Tess' answered back.

Sitting there on the ground without his boots on, it seemed absurd to ask a woman more concerned with living a carefree, almost lazy existence what she'd do if she saw images of war every time she shut her eyes. Would she toss out a careless joke if he told her that now and again, he saw another woman's face behind her own? After all, Tess was vaguely xenophobic- somewhat selfish and more than a bit temperamental. She was _certainly_ willing to inconvenience family members and put them in uncomfortable situations to get her own way. The last time he saw her face to face, she'd smelled enough of cannabis smoke that he'd been coughing for days after.

"Scratch _right_ there-"

Damn, but he was going to miss her.

The words were there on the tip of his tongue, but he never _said them_ because it was too soon to mean any of it: 'Come with me.' It would be a disaster. They would separate within days of leaving the port. She'd spend weeks waiting for the right transport to take her back to planet Normandy, with the entire crew watching the drama until they stopped off at the nearest spaceport.

He turned his face into her hair instead, even if it did smell a little like smoke. There was something else, too. It was a little floral and made his nose run. She went very still, studying him from the corner of her eyes. "I thought you'd be all over this place," Tess told him haltingly, gesturing with one arm to the ship wing that reached toward the sky like the dragon teeth people across the galaxy still used in horror stories. "Hell, we're _sitting on our relatives."_

_Our relatives._ "Hah," he breathed against her temple. "_I may even have a handful of Garrus Vakarian right here." _

Tess didn't take the bait, failing to answer with her typical, boisterous laugh. He found her a little strange that night, a glint of color slicked over her thin, determined mouth and normally wild hair smooth and loose around her shoulders. "This was a fling, wasn't it." A statement, not a question. He had no doubt she'd said those words to many men in the past, utterly unashamed and likely more callous than necessary to every one of them.

"Probably," Garrus admitted, finding it all too easy to let his arm slip about her waist so that he could draw her in closer. They sat in silence that was more comfortable than awkward now, the quiet occasionally pierced by the screech of a distant pyjak or the roar of a kakliosaur. Now and then, he could make out a glinting speck in the distance that was no doubt her brother's skycar. In spite of the soft press of her body, the aftermath of the hallucination left him cold."Who knows when I'll be back? If ever."

They should be rolling around on the ground at this point, no matter how uncomfortable the ride back with her brother would be for her, no matter that it was next to impossible for a human or even an asari to hide the scrapes when they'd been with a turian. He should have his fingers in her hair and a hand on her breast as she rubbed her thigh between his legs. If that had been their intention for the night, neither one of them would have agreed to this particular location.

"All we are is dust in the wind." She shifted out from beneath his embrace, surprisingly hard to hold on to for a woman of her size. He had some vague memory of an old human song he 'just totally had to listen to', of her hips swaying and a little glass pipe in one hand as she'd abandoned the vid-comm in favor of a battered holo-radio. "Throw me my bag?"

_Bag. _So. She'd dropped it next to them while he'd been wrapped up in his own thoughts. Garrus grimaced, watched her from behind. He kept a hand on her so that as she slipped away, his palm slid along her hip, down her thigh and along her knee. She smiled over her shoulder at him, enough of her hair in her face that he could barely see her eyes and mouth. He tossed the satchel lightly in her direction, vaguely impressed that she managed to catch it by the little loop on top while balancing on her knees and one hand.

"I'd be lying if I said part of me didn't hope you had 'the usual' in there."

She gave an unladylike snort and pulled a little, metal storage cube from the duffel, just big enough to fit in the palm of her hand. "No," is all she said to that, gesturing overhead toward the small dot of Jimmy Lopez' shuttle car. Garrus experienced only a brief pang of male disappointment, as he hadn't quite managed to shake off the memory of that phantom woman dogging them both. She flicked the cap of the box upward, bag stuffed under one arm. Skimming a hand through the soil so that it gathered into the palm of her knobby-fingered hand, Tess hummed singsong under her breath. Her fingertips brushed the gravestone with its mostly-gone names-it was impossible for him not to notice. Soil trickled from her clenched fist, marring the slick, glossy interior of the box. He heard the dull _thunk_ of a tiny pebble inside.

_The closest thing to the remains of Vakarian I'm going to get,_ he realized. She stopped her little half-song all at once.

"Your folk died on this ground, just like mine," she said evenly, looking him straight on, just the way she had the first day he'd gone to pick her up from Shepard's Stand. Sighting down target. _Acquired._ "So, you take this with you and you remember your Vakarian blood when they're staring you down on Palaven." She passed the box to him, closed his fingers about the small, primitive keepsake that probably meant more to the humans on this green tangle of a planet than it did the turians or krogan living alongside them.

For all of a moment, he saw past the blithe selfishness to something true- and loved her. "Come with me."

She sputtered and dropped his hand as if she'd been holding on to a hot coal. Garrus froze, forced a laugh and gave her a slight prod with his elbow to play it all off as a joke. Her smile was quick and crooked as she drawled, "You going to give up your career for a colony girl, Victus? You'll be a public figure one of these days. We both know how that story'd end."

"No," he admitted, having regretted the request as soon as it was out of his mouth. He closed his fingers over hers again, still holding the smooth, shiny box. The seed of discontent that had driven him to join the military grew just a _bit_ more, though he failed to realize it at the time. It was better to have this and take away a few good memories instead. _The hell it is._ "I'm too by the book for that sort of stunt."

"Good," Tess said simply, settling beside him once again. She allowed him to draw her back to his side, his free hand settling on her bony hip even as the other gripped that scrap of ground that shouldn't hold the slightest bit of meaning to Garrus. "The more you follow the rules, the less likely you are to run off and splatter-paint some back alley with bits of your face."

Those were the last words they were to share, face to face, for the next three years.


End file.
